Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, and Awkwafina star in Chris McKay’s bloody, hilarious, and over-the-top love letter to the supporting character of the original Dracula story, Renfield, including some wonderful homages to the original 1931 film.

It’s modern-day America and Renfield (Hoult) has relocated Dracula (Cage) yet again to hide him from those who would hunt him. He is convalescing and Renfield is beginning to tire of the dependent nature of their relationship and his role in it. So much so, he’s been going to a support group.

In the same city, Rebecca (Awkwafina) is working as a cop working down to bring the dangerous Lobo crime family headed by Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her son, Tedward (Ben Schwartz).

While Renfield is procuring victims to help heal his horrifying master, the pair cross paths, as do the story’s villains leading to a violent and bloody end. And along the way, there are lots of laughs as Renfield slowly learns to stand up for himself and break himself out of an abusive, decades-long relationship.

Delightfully funny, outrageously bloody, this one is just good to sink your fangs into. Cage is obviously having a great time channelling his inner-Transylvanian. Hoult and Awkwafina are just a delight to see playing off of one another as each character inspires the other.

Whether it was intentional or not, the production design, especially the colour scheme seems very much to lean towards a Joel Schumacher sensibility. There are lots of greens and reds leaning towards the neon colours that would populate so many of his films.

The visual effects that created Cage’s vampiric look are great, and the sequences involving lots of bloody edge up against the cartoonish, intentionally, going more for the laugh than gore.

This one ends up being a really fun ride that despite its blood and laughs actually has a solid story at work at its heart as well as important themes about relationships and self-confidence. Hoult plays Renfield with a sense of miserableness that spills off the screen, while Cage’s Dracula, with a very odd accent, dominates every seen he’s in, and while there’s no real ‘Cage moment’ you can see that his vampire is ready to chew the scenery up at the first drop of blood.

Renfield is a perfectly entertaining horror-comedy that invests its story with a solid narrative and an even more solid cast, and it pays off. Vampire films go in cycles, and this one seems ready to usher in a whole new run… witness The Last Voyage of the Demeter coming hot on this one’s tail.

Check it out.